


Some Assembly Required

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 08:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5579038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn and Poe build a spaceship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Assembly Required

Poe is having a crisis. He has to say goodbye to his X-wing. His gorgeous X-wing that destroyed Starkiller and dozens of other First Order bases and can out-maneuver and out-pace any other ship in the Resistance fleet. The X-wing that he'd poured blood, sweat, and tears into repairing and upgrading after nearly a decade. And now it's probably going to go to some 17-year-old recruit who's never flown in his life and who's going to crash it and-

Finn rolls his eyes.

“It's a _spaceship._ And besides, X-wings only have one seat, I can't fly to save my life, and you wanted a gunner. So we get to pick between a B-wing or a Y-wing. Or I can donate my talents elsewhere.”

“I'm not even going to address 'just a spaceship',” Poe turns to face Finn, one eyebrow raised, “but I really do want you as my gunner, so I can handle loosing my ship.”

Poe is pretty sure Finn doesn't catch the “probably” that he mumbles to himself.

* * *

 

“This _sucks.”_ Poe pouts at the control panel of the Y-wing, “This ship can't move any faster than an overweight Hutt.”

“Hey, but the guns are decent.” Finn cranes his neck to look at Poe. “And the shields are great.”

“The only reason this rusty can,” Poe knocks on the top of the starfighter for emphasis, “has great shields is because it can't maneuver its way out of anything. Trust me, Finn, we'll be about as useful as an astromech with a broken motivator in this ship.”

* * *

 

Finn lasts about ten minutes in the B-wing.

He stumbles out of the cockpit, dizzy after just a few simple maneuvers.

“I never want to set foot near that thing again,” he moans to Poe before proceeding to throw up the entire contents of his stomach.

* * *

 

Finn is going to murder Poe. He's going to bide his time and make a solid plan that nobody would ever accuse him of, frame someone else, and then flee in the night to the Outer Rim and become a bounty hunter.

Because Poe is in his bedroom at some Force-forsaken hour of the night with about 50 different blueprints and manuals spread out on the table and is going on about hyperdrive specifications and targeting computers, and while it's adorable how excited he is, Finn needs his damn rest.

“-the best of both worlds! We have a decent ship _and_ you get to be my gunner. Sound good?”

“Absolutely.” Finn puts on his best of-course-I-was-paying-attention face.

Poe's wide grin relaxes into a soft smile. “You weren't listening, were you.”

“...No.”

“Okay. Short version: we're building ourselves a starfighter,” Poe claps his hand on Finn's shoulder, “Long version you get tomorrow. Get some sleep, okay? I'm down the hall if you need me.”

Poe gathers up his pile of papers and datapads and shuts the door gently behind him. Finn collapses onto his bunk.

“Why couldn't I have rescued a _sane_ pilot?”

* * *

 

Finn walks into the hangar the next morning to see that Poe's already designed pretty much the entire fighter.

“I couldn't sleep,” is his only justification, rubbing the back of his neck.

Finn smiles at him. “No, it's impressive. You're impressive.”

Poe blushes and stammers for a moment, but collects himself and turns to the plans “I'm gonna go see if I can find parts for the engines. Can you handle avionics?”

“Sure,” Finn says, licking his lips and nodding at the list of parts. “Just one question. What's avionics?”

Poe gives an exasperated sigh, but his eyes are kind, “Anything electronic on a starship. The stuff I need you to find for me is mostly sublight flight control, we gotta make sure that's compatible with the engines.”

Finn takes a moment to process. “Alright. Flight control. I got this.”

“See,” Poe grins at him, the blinding one that Finn is kind of in love with, “this'll be easy!”

* * *

 

This was not easy.

Finn and Poe were two weeks into Operation Build-a-Ship, and while they had already bolted and welded the hull of the ship together, the amount of times they'd had to rewire the interior was threatening to drive the both of them crazy.

They were lucky, Poe supposes. With the parts they ripped out of his old X-wing and salvaged from around the base, they had more than halved the amount of time it would taken to build a ship from scratch. The trouble was calibrating all the different systems and hooking them up together. Not so easy when one of you is an ex-stormtrooper and the other a pilot who is really only good at basic maintenance.

Poe has a hydrospanner between his teeth when Snap pokes his head into the ship. He waves a datapad with a readout of the systems' specifications.

“You and Finn are completely, insanely genius. If this fighter actually survives long enough to be useful, and that's a big if, you'll be so ridiculously overpowered that you'll crush the entire First Order fleet before the rest of us have the chance to catch up. Either that, or the weapons system will overload the computer and you'll explode.”

Poe takes the hydrospanner out of his mouth to adjust a few screws.

“Thanks for that,” he says, deadpan. “I really needed to hear about how I'm going to get myself blown up.”

“No problem,” Snap says, equally as casual. “Your boyfriend's back, by the way. He brought lunch.”

Poe doesn't bother to correct him.

* * *

 

“We need Rey,” Finn says, wiping his brow. D'Qar's summers are hot and humid and working in the hangar was unbearable, so he and Poe had dragged the still-unfinished ship outside to work. “She would know how to do this.”

Poe had heard enough stories about Rey's skills as a mechanic to nod in agreement. They were trying to wire the navigation computer to the main controls, but none of the manuals were very useful and all of the wires had to be in the right place otherwise they could come out of hyperspace in the core of a star.

Not like that was a big deal or anything.

“You can say that again. Pass me the macrofuser?” Poe asks, using his thumb to hold a wire in place. “I might just have this.”

Finn tosses the welder to him. “I hope she's alright. Rey, I mean. Jedi training can't be easy.”

“Hey, if there's anyone who can survive Jedi training,” the macrofuser buzzes as Poe affixes the wire, “it's Rey. There, that should do it. Let's fire this baby up.”

“You think you've got it?” Finn's face lights up.

Poe runs a hand through his hair and shrugs. “We've been at this for a week. If this doesn't work, I don't know what will. I say we give it a shot.”

And then he bursts into a grin and any doubt in Finn's mind vanishes.

“Alright.” Finn flips a few switches on the controls and the nav computer hums to life. “Plotting course to…Naboo.”

“Perfect. I'll get Beebee-Ate to check the calculations,” Poe says, waving the droid over.

BB-8 chirps in excitement, glad to be useful, and plugs itself into a terminal.

After a moment, the nav computer chimes. Finn realizes that, at some point, he had grabbed Poe's hand and is now squeezing it tight enough to break a few fingers. His face flushes and he pulls his hand away.

“Sorry!”

“Huh? Oh.” Poe gives him a warm look. “No, it's fine. I don't mind-”

BB-8 interrupts the moment with a bright whistle.

“It works!” And Poe is grinning again. He throws an arm around Finn's shoulder pulling him into a half-hug. “Navigation works! We did it, buddy!”

“Not so fast,” Finn says, but he's smiling too. “We should probably run a few more tests.”

“Oh, yeah,” Poe's nose wrinkles in thought. Finn tries not to think about how his arm is still resting on his shoulder. “Try Bothawui.”

Finn plugs the planet into the nav computer and there's another chime. BB-8 beeps an affirmative.

“Um...Dantooine? That's all the way on the other side of the galaxy.”

It takes the computer almost a minute to plot the course. Neither Finn nor Poe can exhale until BB-8 lets out a whistle.

“It...it really works,” Finn says in disbelief.

“You bet it does, Finn.” Poe's voice is gentle, but laced with a hint of his usual enthusiasm. “You bet it does.”

* * *

 

“Hey, Commander,” Jess says over breakfast one morning, “I sketched some nose art ideas for that fighter of yours.”

She slides a sheet of paper across the table. Poe takes a sip of caf as he picks up the drawings. And then he nearly spits it out.

“Pava! What the hell!”

Jess smirks. “Just some ideas.”

* * *

 

“Are you _sure_ about saying no to the glitter? Everyone would know it was us,” Poe says.

“I don't want to know why the Resistance has glitter in the first place.” Finn replies, the corner of his mouth twitching as he tries very, very hard not to crack up.

Poe gives him a stern look. “Glitter has its uses. You never know when you need to look like...uh...” Finn can't hold back his grin and Poe's giggles bubble into full-on hysterics.

“I can't think of anything. There's no situation where we'd need it. I have no idea why we have glitter, Finn. None.”

Slowly, their laughter subsides, and they're left breathless and grinning at one another.

“But seriously, what colors should we paint it?” Finn gives the racks of paint cans a long look. “We could stick with black and gold, like your old X-wing.”

Poe shakes his head. “Nah, it needs some of you on it. What's your favorite color?”

Finn freezes. Poe realizes his mistake.

“Oh, _kriff_ , sorry. I didn't-” Poe pauses, then looks Finn in the eye and gives him the soft, gentile smile he's reserved just for him. “Are you alright?”

Finn relaxes. “I didn't mean to scare you. It's just...overwhelming, sometimes. Deciding things, I mean. We never got to do that back in the First Order.”

“Don't apologize,” Poe says, earnest and full of concern, “I understand. It's my fault.”

“Hey, if it's anyone's fault, it's the First Order's.”

Poe smiles at that, taking a step back.

“And, uh, light blue, by the way,” Finn adds, “My favorite color is light blue.”

* * *

 

The fighter is finished.

Affectionately nicknamed the “Z-wing” (despite Pava's request that it be called the “Proof Poe Dameron is Head-Over-Heels in Love With Finn-wing”), and looking like an amalgamation between a Clone Wars-era Republic bomber and an A-wing, Finn and Poe both have never been more proud of anything in their lives.  
“You ready to see if this thing will kill us?” Poe hands Finn the helmet he absolutely did not spend all night painting.

Finn gasps. “This is mine!?”

“You betcha, buddy.” Poe climbs up into the cockpit. “C'mon.”

Finn tucks the helmet under his arm and follows him. BB-8 chirps as Finn awkwardly gets into the gunner's cockpit. “I hope you're not mocking me, droid.”

Poe laughs. “Nope. Beebee's wishing you luck, actually. I think it's starting to like you!”

Grinning, Finn straps himself into his seat. “Well in that case,” he says, turning to face the astromech, “thanks.”

The roof of the cockpit slides over Poe's head and the transparisteel bubble closes over Finn. Poe switches his helmet's comlink on.

“Ready for a systems check?”

“More than ready,” Finn replies, followed shortly by a string of beeps and whistles from BB-8.

“Right, Beebee says that flight control and life support are in the green. How's weapons?” Poe presses a series of buttons along the controls.

“Weapons system checks out. Are communications online? Can ground hear us?”

“Loud and clear,” General Organa's voice is crisp over the comlink. “You boys stay careful. I don't know what I'll tell Rey if you two get yourselves blown up.”

“Thanks, General.” Poe smiles. “Engines, hyperdrive, and fuel working. Finn, can you check shields and targeting?”

“Both clear. Is there anything we missed?”

“No, we're clear for takeoff. You ready, Finn?”

“Always, Poe.”

* * *

 

They make it back, alive and in one piece and Finn barely has enough time to pull his helmet off before Poe gathers him up in a tight embrace.

“That was _amazing_ ,” Poe tells him, stepping back.

“Wasn't it? I thought we were about to die at least half the time and it was awesome!” Finn is bursting with excitement and Poe really, really, really wants to kiss him.

And so he does.

* * *

 

Off on the other side of the runway, Snap hands Jess a handful of credits.

“Shame about the nose art, though.” She tilts her head towards the sky. “That would've really sped things up.”

**Author's Note:**

> b/c im a sucker for the whole pilot/gunner duo thing  
> also none of the technical jargon-y stuff is real please don't trust anything in this fic as how starfighter engineering really works


End file.
